This invention relates to vehicle seat belts and more particularly to a portable seat belt which is carried on the person of a rider using public transportation such as school buses.
There have been a significant number of tragic accidents involving school buses, which are not normally equipped with seat belts. It is believed that the extent of injuries or fatalities in such accidents would be significantly reduced if the students carried their own seat belts which they could attach to the seat and remove from the seat at each trip. An obvious difficulty with this is to get the students to attach and use such a seat belt. If it is to be used it must be very quickly and easily attached to the bus seat. The belt must also not be burdensome to carry.
A harness for attachment to school bus seats is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,205,670 which was issued in 1980. This patent shows two straps which are fastened around the back of a school bus seat and which have loops through which are fed horizontal straps which buckle around the student. The time required to install such a harness would seem to stand in the way of its wide acceptance.
The inventors have provided seat belt arrangements in which the seat belt is carried in a belly pack of the type in common use among students today. Since many students carry such belly packs, the appearance of the belly pack carrying the seat belts of the invention is little different from many others. When the student arrives at the bus, he or she simply opens the pack, unfolds the belt, opens the buckle if not already open and either passes the belt loop over the back of the seat in one embodiment, or attaches hooks having spring closures on the ends of two belt sections to the legs or other frame parts of the seat, as in a second embodiment. Depending upon the seat configuration, the hooks might be attached to legs of the seat with the seat belt across the student""s abdomen. They also could be attached diagonally between an exposed upper seat frame member and a leg or lower support member. Following this simple installation, the student simply sits on the seat and closes the buckle with the belt across his or her abdomen or diagonally across his or her chest if the seat has exposed upper frame members.
Upon arrival, the student opens the buckle to stand up, closes the buckle, lifts the belt over the seat back, wraps the belt around the buckle and places the belt and buckle back in the belly pack which is then closed with any convenient closure such as hook and hoop fasteners, snap fasteners or a zipper. Alternatively, with the second embodiment the student would open the buckle, get up from the seat, close the buckle, and move around the seat as required to unhook the hooks from the seat frame. The student can often unhook both hooks from a sitting position. In either case, the student would then wrap the belt around the buckle and put the buckle, belt and hooks into the belly pack.
Applicants have also devised portable seat belt configurations including a single retractor or pairs of retractors which are carried in a student""s belly pack. These belts are pulled out of the pack against the spring force of the retractors and wrapped around the back of the seat, then buckled at the side of the pack as described above. They may be made of lengths for individual seats or for dual size seats. After buckling the belt ends together, the belt end is pulled up to tighten the belt, thereby securing the student to the seat.
Obviously all students will not perform all the steps in the exact order set forth above, but the steps listed are all that is required.
It is believed that the present generation of students, having been accustomed to the use of seat belts and similar restraints since infancy will not find the use of the described arrangement excessively difficult or cumbersome.